April Delights

I wish I had a video camera so I could take you on a virtual tour of our yard.  Everyday seems more spectacular.  Trees are leafing out, many things are budding.  Crab apple, redbud, dogwood, deciduous magnolias, and azaleas all blooming at once! 

We've just come inside from covering up plants.  The weather today is to be first crazy stormy and then the temps to plunge from 70 this afternoon to 29 degrees tonight.  Many things may be too tender to endure.  But we only have so much remay fabric.  We covered the strawberries, in full bloom, the potatoes newly sprouted and quite tender.  And the spring veggies and salad garden, probably could take it but very tender.

Yesterday in the sunshine:

 Taters on the right, beets, spinach and garlic in the middle, salad to the left

 Baby salad greens and peas on the trellis

It has been a strange spring weather wise and I guess this is the new normal in our days of climate change.  Lots of wild extremes and tough storms.  But plants just go on and do their thing.  We hope the blueberries will not be harmed, nor all the brand new leaves on trees, but there is nothing to be done but wait and see.

We did cover this little maple (to the left, yes, that is a dwarf tree), its been nipped in years past.  Always the Japanese maples seem to be among the first trees to leaf out.  Here you can see Davids big project from last weekend.  He moved this path that previously went to the left of the dogwood in the center of the frame past that little maple.  He so carefully moved everything around that you can hardly tell!

One last thing to share, this flowering cherry Hally Jolivette.  This has been its best season ever.  Right outside my office window the tree has gotten fuller with the dainty pink and white flowers everyday for two weeks and now is starting to wind down.  I imagine the cold nights will be the end of the flowers for this season.  But what a joy it's been.

It's Official

You might remember me saying one of my goals for 2013 was to complete my environmental educators certification.  And I did, actually back at the beginning of March, I finally finished, that means I completed 200 hours of classes, teaching and community service projects and finally, today, my documents arrived in the mail.  I'm kinda tickled about getting this done after 4 years of working on it, not sure what it will do for me exactly, but the experience did give me lots of great ideas for teaching EE and the opportunity to meet  many interesting and dedicated folks in the EE field. And there is that sense of accomplishment which isn't a bad thing when you're scattered in as many directions as I often am.

Some other highlights of the week:

• Baby bluebirds continue to chatter in the nest, I expect to see them fledge any day now
• Peas are blooming and there are tiny pods forming
• Peonies are in full bloom as a result of the high temperatures that finally came BOOM, from 70 on Tuesday to 90 today.
• Potatoes are blooming which means taters are forming under ground 
• Strawberries are coming in ripe and sweet
• And finally, another thing that's official.  I removed the last vestiges of the community garden from the Duke Energy site on James Street, a sad scene for me to see it end, but also, it was time and I'm very glad to be done with that project which was hard emotionally and physically.  Now I can concentrate 100% on the one community garden I am still managing. 

You know I can't help gushing about the peonies, so here are a couple of reasons why:

• the flowers and foliage are large and lush
• the petals are silky
• the fragrance can be spectacular; ginger, rose and citrus, all rolled into one
• the colors and flower variations are many

Gaze upon these and be a believer

Looks like a horseshoe wreath of flowers

Bowl of Beauty

Need I say more?  I wish you a good night!

Grey Speckled Cow Peas

So I'm home with a cold, not so sick that I have to take to my bed, sometimes I think I would prefer that- well I say I would- but really?  All the same, I'm feeling crummy enough to not have energy for much of anything.  I hate this- I'm a terrible patient, there are so many things that I need and want to be doing.  You know- house cleaning would be kind of a good idea, its been weeks, or working out in the garden.  It's a spectacular fall day, clear and sunny, just under 70 degrees, there are fall veggies to weed and mulch, summer veggies to pull out, weeds and mulching over the whole place actually would be very useful.  But instead, I'm doing light duty things like shelling peas.

I have this handy little sheller that I inherited from my mother, shoots the shells out one end and the peas back at you.  It's the kind of task that would be good to have small children around for so they could run after the peas that fly across the room.  But there are none of those here, so I instead, put on my spectacles and rove around picking up all that I can find that have been flung to the far corners of the house.

These grey speckled cow peas are a new variety for me.  You know, if you're a regular reader, about my zaniness for beans.  These are an heirloom variety, in the same family as the purple hull black-eyed peas that I've grown for many years, but entirely different in nature.  For one- they are impossible to shell when fresh but need to be picked as they are starting to dry out and then allowed to dry out completely before attempting to shell them.  The purple hulls are quite easy to shell by hand when fresh and pop into the freezer for later use as "fresh" peas.  I've yet to cook any of these speckled peas, though they are very beautiful with their mauve mottled coloration and white eyes.  I think this would make an excellent Formica pattern for a kitchen counter.  Or maybe a screen saver background.

I'll let you know how they taste when I get around to cooking some, I'm guessing I might get about a quart of dried beans off my tiny experimental patch. I planted an area about 5x6, that has reached to more like 10x10, they're a bit rambling and very prolific.  I like that in a bean.

So I'm off for another cup of ginger lemon tea with honey accept I'm out of honey so thinking of trying sorghum, I've got lots of that, I wonder if it will have the same soothing properties?  Will see.

Another month of garden madness

 Peony Festiva Maxima with Siberian Iris Gay Butterflies 

This past month- yes it's been an entire month since my last post- has been a month full of gardening. I know that comes as no surprise to you my faithful readers.  The roses and peonies have been the highlight of our garden over these past weeks.  First this vigorous apricot climber, named Crepuscule- horrible sounding- though it means twilight in French, was in it's glory for about 2 weeks.  It stretches across 30 feet of the fence, 15 feet in both directions from its base.  The only thing that would make it more glorious would be if it were more fragrant, but I'm not complaining.

 This rose starts out pink and mellows to apricot

As the crepuscule rose (reminds me of corpuscle!) was fading, the pale pink New Dawn rose on the west side of the house came into its prime, with the jackmanii clematis blooming in unison, an idea I got from the Wayside gardens catalog.  This combo is a treat and it drapes in front of the kitchen window making dish washing much more pleasant.

Another climber that we got from Niche Gardens is the Lonicera (honeysuckle) Goldflame.  It's mop top of multicolored fragrant blooms crowned the top of the entrance gate for many weeks and is just now shedding onto the walkway below.

In the vegetable garden we were blessed with weeks of asparagus and now we move into the full flush of spring goodness with peas, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, chois, kale and onions threatening to produce more than we can possibly consume.  This is one of the thickest and tallest stands of peas we have ever grown.  When picking them yesterday they were so tall and so many that my arms actually started to get tired!  And wow are they sweet.

In the past two weeks I've also been working at getting the summer garden planted, tomatoes are in and staked, 2 dozen plants this year.  The slicers are: Bolseno, Cherokee Purple, Big Beef, Celebrity, Mrs. Benson and Georgia Streak.  Two kinds of plum tomatoes; Red Agate and Marianna and two cherries, Sungold and Sugar Cherry.  We are in a never ending search for a red cherry tomato that we like, sweet and not too tough a skin and every year we try a new variety, every year we are a little disappointed.  I think its hard to beat the sweetness of the Sungold.  If you know of a great red cherry- leave me a comment about it.

I also planted cucumbers, squash, beans, basil and sweet potatoes.  Still need to set out the peppers and eggplants and then we will be pretty well set for summer.  I just love having a garden that I can walk out into and ponder dinner or run to for a green onion, bunch of cilantro or handful of spinach for the morning omelet or dinner tacos.  It's work to keep it all going and there are days when I question our sanity in growing such a big garden, but most of the time, I'm grateful to be able to have this spot of earth where I can enjoy the green of plants, the blue of the sky and feel the sun that nourishes my body and the plants that feed us.